My First Surf Stoke

Memories are vivid of those lazy summer dayz in Phoenix, AZ...where I grew up and got to experience my first surfing "stoke" body surfing this awesome concrete beach break situated within the hot and arid confines of the Arizona desert. I remember when the lifeguards would call everyone out of the pool for the "surfing hour"...allowing those customers who had brought boards to surf undisturbed and free from the floating non-surfers.

"Big Surf which was the first wave-pool of its kind in the world - and located smack-dab in the middle of the Arizona desert. The system worked on a principal similar to a toilet, and it was consequently referred to {by us} as "The Flush".
A lot of my friends actually learned how to surf here, and here is where I fostered friendships that still exist today. This was our "hood", and we were "the locals". We knew all of the lifeguards (the authority figures of the facility) and found every way possible to get in - as cheaply as possible, and as often as possible."

Though we had our own backyard pool, in which the only "wave-making" being done was via the cannon-balls off the diving board; Big Surf was our annual ritualistic summer pilgrimage and the generator of many a memory of pre-surfing fun. Today, Big Surf is simply a "Water-Park" that has been refurbished and refined for today's crop of over-indulgent pre-pubescent kiddies. And as far as I know...no longer has "surf sessions" for those patrons that came there to surf the concrete flush.